Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (8 page)

She didn’t say anything, but both Malia and Dean were listening intently.

Swallowing another gulp of water, I continued. “It was... God, it was years like that. We got together, and got married like eight months later. Everything was this big, giant hurricane, you know?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Dean said. “Crazy.”

“Crazy’s exactly what it was. We got together, and dated approximately twice before I decided I was in love with him.”

“You weren’t?” Malia asked.

“No, I was. I definitely was. But it was the kind of love that you catch, you know? The kind you catch like a cold and then it goes away and you’re left living with your cold. I think it was like that for both of us, but he wouldn’t let me go. I seemed like a trophy or something to him. The cute little lynx you keep at home and don’t touch except when you’re out at a party.”

Malia’s mouth was a little open, Dean’s was a hard line. He knew all this and, from the look on her face, he’d never betrayed my confidence.

“I... uh, sorry,” I said, smiling nervously. “I didn’t mean to unload all that.”

“I’m the one who asked,” Malia said.

My cheeks were hot. I knew tears were coming soon, and I hated it, I hated feeling weak.

“If it does any good,” Dean said, grabbing my hand. “From the very beginning, I knew Liam was a creep. I told you as much, right?”

I nodded.

“I just got that feeling in my guts like he was up to no good. But this guy? It’s weird. I met him once, talked to him for about thirty seconds, but I got the feeling that there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. There’s a good soul in that bear’s body.”

Staring down at the ravaged remains of my lunch, I reached out and tried to calm my trembling hands with another drink of tea. It didn’t work, but it was a good effort.

“I’m just scared, I think.”

Dean shrugged. “It makes sense. I mean, you got burned once, right? But think of it this way. How many shitty relationships did you watch
me
go through?”

I snickered. “I dunno, about thirty?”

He wrinkled his forehead. “Something about like that. Did you see me panic and get scared?”

“Sometimes.”

“Exactly. I got down, I felt beat up, and I felt like there wasn’t anyone who would ever want me. And you know what?”

“You were right,” Malia said, interrupting.

Never – not once in my life – had laughing ever felt so good, or so desperately needed.

––––––––

H
e counted the days.

Every single one that went by without his seeing neither hide nor fur of Mitch or the Devils, Orion kept count of them by digging a notch in the side of his boot. Every day that passed without him figuring out what to do about the broken heart he suffered? Those days he counted with a notch in his mind.

That’s where it hurt the most. That’s where he was most likely to remember.

He counted the nights, too, like this one. A big, fat, yellow moon hung in the sky. In one way it was a comfort to see, but in another it was almost like the thing was mocking him. After all, moons are meant to be shared, watched with someone you love.

But for Orion, love was something that he’d run from his whole life.

There were a couple of women he’d seen that he really liked. A couple he’d probably loved. Every single one of them, he’d run off because he was scared of what would happen if Mitch, or the rest of the Devils, found out.

They’d harass him, they’d gang up on him – because they had to if they wanted to stand a chance in a fight – and then when they couldn’t actually hurt
him
, they’d hurt
her
.

This girl though? Clea? She wasn’t like them. She would’ve died to save that cub. That’s not the kind of girl Orion needed to worry about. Then again, she’s also not the kind of girl he could
find
.

“I promised to find her,” he said, dropping a pebble in the water. “And here I sit, wondering how.”

He’d been a hunter all his life. That’s what his actual job
was
in the Devils. He hunted people who didn’t want to be found. He caught people on the run. He made people pay who deserved it. And others, like Ricky? Those that the Club wanted to murder who he knew didn’t deserve it? He’d always found a way to let them escape.

But he couldn’t find a damn girl. All he needed was one clue, one tiny hint.

That single piece of evidence eluded him.

Orion dangled his legs into the Jamesburg River, exactly one and a half miles downstream from where he’d met
her
. He went back through every day for the last nine days, hoping to find some trace of her – a forgotten shirt, a lost bandana – anything. He could track her, hunt her down, make her his.

Of course, that was all predicated on
finding
something in the first place, which he had so far completely failed to do. And for a bear? That was pretty embarrassing.

Not like he had anyone to be embarrassed in front of, though, not since running from the Devils.

His constant companion was his paranoia.

Every stick that cracked, every fish that broke water in the river and plopped back in made him look around nervously, convinced that something was coming. Nothing did, but he never quit looking back.

“Hell,” Orion said, swirling a toe in the water and dropping another of the small pebbles he had picked up from the sandbar where he met her. He didn’t really have any idea how, but something told him he’d never forget that girl, with her streaky, dirty-blond hair and those cool, even eyes that turned up just slightly on the outside corners. “What am I doing?”

The big, slumped over bear took a deep breath and let it out slowly, dropping another pebble in the water. This was the other way he passed the time. Paranoia, thinking about Clea, and how she was so strong, so brave, that when the little cub was in trouble, she dove on top of her.

And then, this. Dropping pebbles in the water. Every hour or so he’d trek back to the sandbar, grab another handful of rocks and wade back. It was like a very slow, very boring version of limbo.

Another tiny stone
plunked
into the water between Orion’s feet and he plucked the next one, rolling it around in his fingers. Each rock was worn into a smooth oval. They’d probably been in the river for a thousand years or more, sitting there, waiting, and letting time wear them down.

Exactly like him.

In between rounds of pondering the finer points of existence, a loud crack caught Orion’s attention. He swung his massive head to the left, in the direction of the sound, and glared hard into the trees. Every muscle in his body tensed, ready to pounce. He climbed up on his branch into a low crouch. Whatever came out of those woods was going to regret being alive.

He narrowed his eyes, sniffing the air to catch the scent of whatever was...

“Jesus,” Orion grunted. “A squirrel? I need some Xanax.”

As he derided his own anxiety, a small, brown and white speckled squirrel poked its head out of the undergrowth. Orion watched it run along the riverbank for a second, dig something up from the dirt and then run off, back into the trees. On the edge of the forest, the little guy sat up on his haunches, gnawed on whatever he’d dug up and then disappeared with a chirp.

Slouching heavily, he relaxed again. The overhanging branch that functioned as his throne creaked slightly as Orion settled back into his standard, straddling position and dropped one more time-worn stone into the water. This time when he did, a foursome of trout scattered when the rock hit the surface and sank.

For a moment, he stared at the ripples emanating from where he’d dropped his rock, just letting his mind be carried away like the leaf that came down the river, followed the ripples and went on its way.

The oak leaf didn’t do any attention-getting at first, but a second later, Orion surveyed the woods again, and realized that the only trees as far as he could see, were Douglas firs. Jamesburg was famous for them. Or so he’d heard.

Looking back toward the sandbar where he met his destiny, he stood up, craning his neck.

“What in the hell?”

Orion hopped off the tree and took a few steps toward what appeared to be a massive tree that had fallen in the river. Unconsciously he shoved the handful of pebbles in his pocket and took a few more steps.

“A tree? Another one? What’s going on here?”

Someone in the distance shouted – or maybe it was a laugh, it was hard to tell – and then another tree, then another, and a fourth, all fell at more or less the same time, splashing into the river and sending down a cascade of leaves.

These were oak leaves, Orion noticed. They came from somewhere else. All that was around the Jamesburg River were huge Douglas firs. Oaks? Someone was doing this on purpose.

In the distance he heard a squeaky, partially slurred voice shout triumphantly. “This’ll show that asshole mayor!”

Orion cocked his head to the side and leaned toward the sound, sniffing the air. The acrid, sharp odor was familiar to him, but it was just outside his immediate grasp. There were hints of musk and heavy rose aromas overlying a very potent perfume. It seemed to him that sort of scenting could go a long way to hide the smell of a body. “Muskrat?” he said under his breath. “No, no... too sickly sweet. Buffalo?” Again he shook his huge head, shaggy hair falling around his shoulders.

His eyes weren’t the best, but when three figures emerged from the forest to inspect what had just happened, he squinted against the moon.

“Squirrels,” he said, immediately remembering the curious little guy who had popped out of the forest earlier, and stared at him for a second. “Two small ones, and one that looks like a mutant.”

“If he won’t do anything to preserve the forest,” the shrill, and very angry, voice squawked again, “I’ll do it for him! That stupid Erik Danniken won’t know what to do when Celia Maynard plays hardball!”

Orion shook his head in disbelief, still staring upriver as another torrent of leaves circled his outcropping. That’s when he noticed something
different
about the river.

The current was weaker. Not much, but it was enough to note.

“Without water,” the strange, incredibly angry creature shrieked, “this town’ll dry up! It’ll die! It’ll rot in hell!”

“Wouldn’t it
not
rot?” It was the squirrel speaking up, in a markedly smaller voice that Orion could barely pick up with his super-sensitive hearing. “Not being wet, I mean. Wouldn’t that make it—”

“Shut up! If I wanted your opinion, Billie, I would
pound
it out of you! I’ll flood the whole place! I’ll turn that stupid alpha into a waterlogged puppy!”

The squirrel fell silent and the leader of this unsanctioned water control team stomped around on top of one of the logs she’d just forced into the river. “This is
my
moment! Celia Maynard hasn’t ever had a moment before, except when she screamed at that jackass alpha in the middle of that stupid art show! Don’t ruin it for me!”

Listening to the circus unfold, Orion stuck his hand back in his pocket and dragged the smooth worn stones out again. One by one, he rubbed his fingers over each, then dropped it in the weakening river.

“Sorry,” the squirrel said. “I was just...”

“Celia Maynard is going to
save
this forest! All of the woodland shifters will be safe from the townies spreading outward like a bacterial virus!”

“Uh, wouldn’t that—”

“Shut up!” Celia barked. “Beavers, squirrels, ground hogs, possums, we all deserve better than a Subway store on every corner and Red Box kiosks! We deserve our woods, and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe!”

The second squirrel, the one who had yet to say anything, began to clap. The giant, angry squirrel who kept yelling, turned on her heel and he saw her tell-tale, well, tail.

Beaver
, he realized, as the scent hit his nose again. Trees being dragged from somewhere, damming up a river, very beaver things to do. It didn’t make much sense, admittedly, but then again, beavers rarely did.

Orion counted the stones he dropped. Five, six, seven... And then he paused.

Number eight wasn’t like the others. He squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, dropping all the rest of the rocks at once. This one had a bunch of barbs. That wasn’t normal. He held it up in the moonlight, and stared in wonder at the fire dancing in the stone.

“A diamond earring?”

A quick glance back toward the excitement revealed Celia and her two squirrels hopping off the freshly delivered logs and probably going to get some more.

Orion stared again at the strange little stud he’d found. Was this what he’d been looking for? A hint of his... he didn’t want to think
mate
because that meant he’d have to deal with his own fear, his own anxiety, about dragging someone into his brutal world.

On the other hand, there’s no denying love. There’s no denying fate. He’d been doing that for far too long, and failing spectacularly at it. Maybe it was time to give up on
his
charade and get on with life after the Devils.

He brought the stud to his nose and sniffed. Only the vaguest hint of the aroma of the person who’d worn it remained. Lifting his head to the sky and closing his eyes, he took another, longer sniff. Sticking out his tongue, he touched the back of the stone – the part that would have rested against Clea’s ear – and let her scent and her taste fill him.

This was it.

He knew it before he smelled, before he tasted, but afterwards he was sure.

As sure as the night was dark, and as sure as beavers were bat-shit crazy, he had found his mate.

Briefly, Orion considered putting the earring back in his pocket, but that was too risky. Instead he wandered back to the riverbank, back to where he kept his very limited worldly possessions. Opening one of his two books – a textbook about Dentistry – he rotated the earring like a tiny drill until it pierced the cover. Then, he mashed it in deep enough that there was no chance of it escaping.